Left Behind
by Fantastic Nonsense
Summary: Remus Lupin has just lost four of his friends to Voldemort; one of them to evil, and three to death. At the Potter's funeral, he mourns the friends he will never see laugh again.


I should be working on my homework. I should be working on Buried Secrets and More than a Memory. I should be cleaning my room. And I should not be churning out another oneshot while I've got so much work to do. But when has that stopped me?

I've been reading a lot of sad oneshots lately; just click on my favorites and go to the Harry Potter part and see; tons of sad oneshots recently added.

After reading 'White Satin For Mourning', I, for some odd reason, was thinking of Remus.

This, eventually, came into being an hour ago, and then I realized 'Oh damn. I haven't done my homework and it's Sunday night.'

So, posting now, homework immediately after.

Aren't you guys glad I think of you and writing before schoolwork?

.

.

So...Left Behind.

Yeah.

And please review. Please. You really have no idea how much I'm begging you. None of my oneshots get many reviews, and I am desperate for information.

~Aubrey

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DISCLAIMER: I no more own Harry Potter than I own Narnia or Sherlock Holmes. In other words, I am a poor lowly teenager writing on the side while being swamped in homewok.

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Left Behind

...

It was raining the day they laid them to rest. Her crimson hair laced with her namesake flowers was spread like a halo around her head. Her emerald eyes were forever closed to the world. His raven hair was messy even in death, his glasses hanging crookedly on his face.

While everyone else was celebrating, twenty people gathered in a lonely cemetery on a rainy November day, mourning the loss of two of the best people anyone could ever know. He however, was mourning four; the two being buried, the one that would never be buried, and the one that was lost.

The rites were over, and the church slowly emptied, one by one, until a single man remained. His frayed and patched clothes hung over his lean frame, his long sandy brown hair obscuring the tears marking tracks down his devastated face. His mind was turbulent, barely containing his emotions as he knelt down beside the double grave that now held two of his best friends.

It was a full moon the night they died. Halloween night. _Imagine that_, he thought bitterly to himself. _On the one night you should have been there to help, you weren't. Because you were too busy running around howling like an animal. Because you were an animal._

He read the inscription, 'The last enemy to be destroyed is death.' Yeah right. They took down Voldemort but couldn't escape death? How cruel is that? Doesn't death even care that he took three of my best friends this week and that I found another to be a betrayer? No.

He had immediately applied for custody of the child, of course, but the Ministry wasn't feeling too kindly towards werewolves and the one thing he felt he could help rectify was dashed. He could not even make up for his mistakes by caring for Lily and James' child. They wouldn't let him. He had gone to his aunt's instead, even after protests from Remus saying that Petunia would hate him, not love him.

He would remain alone, and alone he felt he should be. He had let down everyone he cared about_. I should have been there_, he thought savagely. _If nothing else, I would have gone down with them!_

The last few days had been the worst of his life, including the first months after he was bitten. They had been one faded gray blur, but this time everything was sharp and clear, too clear. The horror and grief upon finding his friends' bodies that chilly morning in the house that had been blown apart. The looks of pure determination on James' face and of tearful love on Lily's. The rage and betrayal upon learning Sirius had sold them out, and the added grief of Peter dying. This was only the beginning of a long and hard road, one he dreaded to walk down, because walking meant facing other people he knew, trying to live a life that seemed meaningless now that he was the last Marauder.

The Marauders. The four friends that had faced everything together, from Slytherins to terrifying girls to Voldemort himself were no more. Only he remained, and his heart broke as his mind finally realized that. Sirius was no longer a Marauder; he had forfeited that title the second he had given himself to Voldemort. James and Peter were dead, and Lily, the adopted one, was also at rest.

Only Remus remained. The lone Marauder, standing alone and afraid at the gravesite of his friends, mourning his loss while the rest of the world celebrated. Did they not care for the people who had died? Did they not care that while Voldemort was gone, two honorable people had sacrificed their very existence, leaving behind devastated friends and family?

They probably did, but they were too busy drinking themselves under the table in joy to notice the grief-stricken people who knew them. They cared more about the boy than his parents. The Boy-Who-Lived, he was now called. Nobody called his parents anything but Lily and James Potter, except the few who called them Prongs and Tiger. They remembered nothing except the fact they sacrificed their lives to bring down Voldemort.

None of them knew James had a vain streak and _always_ looked in a mirror before going out. None of them knew Lily had a marvelous singing voice, one that she only revealed at Christmastime when singing carols. None of them knew they blew up at each other and had a ferocious row a week before they died. None of them knew the tough and fierce James Potter turned to putty at the site of his wife and son.

None of them knew the true Lily and James. None of them.

He turned and strode out of the graveyard, swiping angrily at his tears. He was left behind, left alone and essentially friendless in a world that hated his kind. Why was he still here and no one else was? Why was it him and not someone else who deserved to live? James and Lily shouldn't have died, shouldn't have left Harry an orphan in a cold and unforgiving world, growing up in a household that held no affection for him.

Remus John Lupin opened the gate, and walked out of the graveyard. His hand shook as he pulled out his wand and murmured a spell behind him, adding an inscription below the epitaph, one that Harry himself would miss more than sixteen years later.

He pocketed his wand shakily and apparrated back to his flat, where he promptly shed the tears he'd been holding in for days, ever since he first saw James' dead face staring blankly at him.

Back in Godric's Hollow, the rain turned into snow as the temperature dropped. A light dusting of snow would soon cover the ground, making the children run, laugh, scream, and play. But there would be no true smiling for Remus for almost four months. Harry would not run and play with the other children. And Lily and James Potter, the two that had given their lives to save their son and rid the world of Voldemort, would never laugh again.

_In Memoriam:_

_For the best friends a man could have._

_For the brightest smile a woman could give._

_For the best prank ever played._

_And for brothers who will never again laugh together._

_May the Marauders rest in peace._


End file.
